Ganji Heading to America at Invitation of Yale

WASHINGTON – Iran’s leading dissident and advocate for nonviolent internal regime change is expected to visit America this month at the invitation of Yale University and other higher education institutions.Akbar Ganji, a journalist who was imprisoned in 2000 for writing a series of articles and books about a former Iranian president ordering a series of murders of his country’s intellectuals, arrived in Moscow yesterday to receive the World Association of Newspapers’ Golden Pen of Freedom award. Mr. Ganji is scheduled to travel to Italy and France this week.A former associate of Mr. Ganji’s who now resides in New Haven, Conn., Mohsen Sazegara, said yesterday that his old colleague had not yet accepted the invitation to visit America. He said Yale has decided to invite Mr. Ganji there.Mr. Ganji’s current tour places one of the most potent opponents of Iran’s ruling mullahs before an international audience. The timing of his visits comes as Tehran is readying its formal response to last week’s offer from Washington to rejoin talks on suspending its nuclear enrichment program.Opposition figures close to Mr. Ganji in Iran have said in the last two weeks that they would favor American-Iranian discussions if the topic was human rights and political prisoners, and not a bargain that involved nuclear disarmament for security guarantees.Mr. Ganji was released from Evin prison in April after capturing the world’s attention by conducting a hunger strike for most of July and August 2005. In prison, Mr. Ganji managed to write and have published on the Internet a two-part manifesto laying out the case for collective non-cooperation with the current regime and suggesting strategies for ousting the country’s current unelected religious rulers.No figure in Iran today, with the possible exception of Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, the senior cleric who also has called for direct election of the supreme leader, has been so outspoken in his public challenges to the supreme leader.Speaking yesterday in Moscow, Mr. Ganji said he was accepting the award from the world’s press on behalf of “all Iranian dissidents and freedom fighters.” He added, “More than anyone, the prize should go to those who fought for freedom and human rights and were as punishment slaughtered during what came to be known as ‘Serial Murders.’ The prize should go to the prisoners who in 1987 were executed while serving their sentences in prisons across Iran.”Mr. Ganji went on to outline his concept of “global citizenship,” which he said should be guided by the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who posited that human beings must be treated as ends in themselves and not means.He also borrowed from the German philosopher toward the end of his address, when he noted that “enduring peace” between nations could only be achieved as a condition of universal democracy, a conviction Mr. Ganji shares with President Bush.At one point in the speech, he offered an indirect rebuke to some Iranians in exile who have been wary of accepting those inside their home country who once participated, as Mr. Ganji did, in the 1979 Islamic revolution.“My slogan for fighting against oppression and violence is simple: Forgive, but never forget,” Mr. Ganji said. He added, “Forgiveness leaves hatred to the hateful, ill-wishing to evildoers, and revenge to the vengeful. But forgiveness does not condone forgetting the crime. Nor does it condone our duty to resist bravely the criminal rulers or the dogmatic defenders of past crimes.“We must always remember that the crime and the injustice did occur. We must always remember the conditions that led to the creation of fascism, totalitarianism, and other forms of dictatorship, that have been the source of injustice.”Those words may have been directed at the American-based Iranian opposition groups that have recently cast aspersions on the anti-regime credentials of student leaders who have come to America, such as Ali Afshari and Akbar Atri.One of the risks of a possible visit to American for Mr. Ganji is that the Iranian authorities may use his visit as a pretext to bring new charges against him. On April 27, a former visiting scholar at the National Endowment for Democracy, Ramin Jahanbegloo, was arrested at Tehran’s international airport and accused of espionage.Mr. Sazegara said he did not think Iran’s prosecutor would bring new charges against Mr. Ganji if he visited America. “I don’t think they will give him a new sentence at this point,” he said. “The situation in Iran is not good. They have many problems with the international community now. They would prefer not to create more headaches for themselves.”

Ganji Heading to America at Invitation of Yale

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